Frederic Meinders

Here are a couple of performances by a truly outstanding performer, who I only stumbled across by chance very recently. It's interesting just how obvious his dynamic range and tone quality is, despite the fairly primitive recorded sound of the old video camera (although it certainly sounds a lot better still in the commercial release of the same performance, which I found for download on amazon).

Yeah youtube is fantastic. Really great performer FM never heard of him before there is a recording of him playing Rach#2 sonata the lyrical parts are just unbeleivably finetuned. Read that he studied for Nikita Malagoff for a while I'd say he is a bearer of that fine elegant tradition from Isidor Philipp and fprward. Here is the only clip I could find with Magaloff when he was "younger" maybe not in his absolutely best shape but still. Eric

Meinders is a wonderful discovery, thank you! Can't say that I could say the same for Magaloff however. Listen to the LEFT hand of the Schubert - utterly mechanical and lacking in shape... AFF

I'm no fan of Magaloff heard him in Saint-Saens g min and that was not bad. Could be interesting to look at his technique (the temperament is for another forum...). As I can se all looks very "light" a lot of the type of less desirable armweight and collapse of the 2nd knuckle.Which explains the lack of orchestration. Here is NM in Scriabin. What do you think? And what do you think of Meisners technique? Eric

Yeah, I bought Magaloff's Scriabin Etudes years ago. He was old then, certainly, but it doesn't illustrate anything terribly outstanding. I'd be interested to hear what Alan thinks of Meinders technique. While I'm glad that the Husum recital was filmed (as I might never have discovered him if not for that) it's a real shame that the person with the camera didn't have the foresight to sit somewhere more revealing. However, the other film shows his hands much more clearly. To be honest, I'm surprised that someone who sits so high can produce such beautiful tone. I generally associate that kind of position with either shallow tone or thudding lumps of sound. However, he produces that kind of pure yet deep sound (both in the very deepest of cantabile tones and within very soft ones) that I'd associate with the very greatest of players. I do hear a little bit of effort at times in louder passages (in the professionally recorded CD release of the same Saint-Saens which captures the performance far better than the video). I'm not sure if the larger body movements are necessarily a positive, technically speaking. However, I think that his softer playing is absolutely exemplary tone production. Whatever he is doing, it clearly works. By the way, you can buy the score of the Saint-Saens and many others from his website. I've been learning it for a while now and it's staggeringly well written. There are many small differences from the actual performance, but it's incredible how well it both fits the hand and the piano's sound- in terms of what resonates. However, from a musical point of view, what really stands out is the sheer freedom of that virtually silent wash of accompaniment, especially in the left hand alone section. It hugely reminds me of the way Nyiregyhazi would 'fake' the accompaniment of various pieces, often adding metrically unquantifiable arpeggiations of the harmony that don't even begin to look like the notated score and pppp tremolos that are scarcely even detectable, other than in the fact that they keep the sound sustaining. The score has harmonic arpeggiations that are almost solely in regular semiquavers, whereas the performance features a wealth of free rhythms, that could scarcely be notated or recreated willfully. While the score is close enough to what he does not to feel like a big rip-off, it's interesting to compare the score to what a true improviser will actually do in practise. Were his actual execution notated, it would be implausible to come even close to recreating it. It's a big reminder to me that what a lot of composers wrote down is not necessarily intended to be anything beyond a wash of support- that is supposed to aid the melody's projection, rather than compete against it. You hear a lot of people talk about how those who compose ought to be able to show more creativity as performers, but most composers seem to make terrible pianists. Meinders genuinely seems to have that rare ability where the conception of sound and the improvisational element are on the same level and merge into one whole. There are many moments where I sense that he actually forgot exactly what he wrote in the first place or even stumbles unintentionally for a split second. But he instantly turns it into a positive, by adapting the fine details- both in terms of the figuration and in terms of the resultant arch of the phrase. I sense that some of the intense agitato moments where the rubato pushes were not preconceived, but he always seems to make the improvisational adjustments that will turn any split second of instability into part of a natural musical unit.

I visited Meinders sight and what a nice surprise. There were only soundclips with Kreisler transcriptions just magic like if Kreisler and Rach raised from the dead.Could you recommend any compositions? Just read "Honing.." and I'd say FM uses among everything else "the hook" and the "catscratch" and chords with "fingers as levers"- he reminds me of Godowaky who couldn't play a single note without beauty as they say. By the way did you listen to clips from the pupils of Isodor Philipp mostly women but there is this same elegance and finetuning.Thats why I thought of the connection Philipp Magaloff Meinder but that's of course pure and probably irrelevant speculation. Another clip which maybe reveals some more (playing starts at 0:58)

Another clip which maybe reveals some more (playing starts at 0:58) This is very revealing. When you see him playing a transcription from the Old Man, where it's easy to imagine how H. would do it, you see how similar and how different their techniques are. Similar because their hands are set up pretty much the same. Different because he "uses his arm to produce tone." In other words, you see his arms bouncing up and down in a way that Horowitz's never did. Horowitz had the power of his arms going into his notes but it was internalized. The externalization of this aspect of skeletal connection I believe limits the bounds of FM's musicianship. His phraseology would be less boring if he wasn't hamstrung by those arm bounces.... Notwithstanding my criticism, I think it's great playing! AFF